Slashdot Mirror
Troops In Afghanistan Supplied By Robot Helicopter
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Pakistan is still blockading NATO war supplies passing through the port of Karachi in response to last month's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by an alliance air strike. But inside Afghanistan, supply lines are about to get a lot safer for NATO's logisticians as an unmanned helicopter just delivered a sling-load of beans, bullets, and band-aids to Marines at an undisclosed base in Afghanistan marking the first time a drone has been used to resupply a unit at war. The 2.5-ton, GPS-guided K-MAX can heft 3.5 tons of cargo about 250 miles up and over the rugged and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan across which NATO troops are scattered and can fly around the clock. 'Most of the [K-MAX] missions will be conducted at night and at higher altitudes,' says Marine Capt. Caleb Joiner, a K-MAX operator. 'This will allow us to keep out of small-arms range.' K-MAX will soon be joined in Afghanistan by Lockheed's robo jeep that can carry a half a ton of supplies for up to 125 miles after being delivered to the field in a CH-47 or CH-53 helo."
If we have a robo-chopper big enough to carry all that.....why not just put guns on the robo-chopper and send it in?
Meanwhile, my kid's school can't afford to hire enough teacher for every class.
Is the fact that it is flying out of small-arms fire somehow unusual? Why wouldn't our resupply helicopters already fly high?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Just in case you were afraid of a little humanity being left in war.
Great, soon we'll be accidentally feeding Iran.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I wonder why the design is so conventional looking? They must have modified an existing light helicopter for remote control. Either that or the standard cockpit style helicopter design is already the most efficient aerodynamically. I was expecting to see what amounted to an engine and gas tank that can fly.
Better known as 318230.
Keeps personnel away from threats in dangerous areas. Might have a few vulerabilities if they are radio jammed, though. Hope built-in evasive tactics are better than for that captured drone.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Works great until Iran or China or somebody spoofs the GPS and collects all the goodies that it was transporting.
The creepy robotic mule had the day off.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
If we can fuel them without depending on Saudi Arabia, then we can breath a sigh of relief.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...start developing their own robo-drones, and arming those...then both sides could send robots to fight each other, and leave the humans out of the mess. ESPN could pick up the matches (er, 'battles') and broadcast them with top brass doing colour-commentary. Oh ya, we could monetize the heck out of this. Maybe the arms manufacturers could put big logos on all their component parts.
"The Iranians have deployed their battledroids with Browning MK II Ion Lasers, but they should be at a serious disadvantage versus the new Fabrique National GallopingGatling-equipped American bots, George. This could be a rough season...er, war, for the Iranians."
"I wouldn't count on that yet, Bob, if we cut to the view from Bandar Abbas, you can just make out some crates of Remington Droidraper high-speed rail cannons entering the Iranian supply lines. Thos frontline bots are one quick pitstop away from some game-changing firepower once those bad babies arrive here!"
-cue commercial break-
I get the whole function over form thing, and I appreciate it most of the time. Heck, I was in the military, so I completely understand that function comes first. But that is one seriously stupid looking helicopter. Maybe other people like it, and if you do, that's fine. But I think it looks like it was designed by herp and derp. Couldn't they have modified a Bell 222 or something cool looking?
In the US we spend more money per student than any other county. Problems like the one you describe occur because too much money disappears into administration. You probably have no money for a new teacher's salary because administrators wanted to redecorate one of their offices.
That said, you really need to work much harder on your silly flame bait, its not supposed to be so obvious.
Hopefully this will allow human operators to get by with a little less fatigue. Lesson their op tempo a little.
And do more with less. In this case, we have a need to deliver more cargo and we have won't need as many pilots to do it.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
[Meanwhile, my kid's school can't afford to hire enough teacher for every class.] But they do have more employees than students.
(State of Washington)
Its been so much better since D.C. took control.
No brain, no pain.
A few things to note...
These remote-piloted helicopters and "flying jeeps" are being deployed in testing because they are thought to be safer methods of resupply than an 11-B driving a truck. This indicates that in Afghanistan, after almost ten years of occupation (longer than the Soviets stayed) most of the country is considered too dangerous for the occupiers to move freely in.
The second point is that these neat toys don't provide mass logistics supply to the forces in Afghanistan from friendly countries, the convoys of fuel tankers, food and ammunition, the thousands of tonnes of supplies needed each day to keep a modern military force operational. The US yahoos who blew up a bunch of Pakistani troops has cost the NATO forces that safe border convoy route and no technological tricks will restore that conduit. Abject apologies and reparations might help but this is the US who don't apologize for slaughtering other people's troops even by accident.
Third point, following on from the second is keeping these remotely-piloted aircraft flying is expensive in fuel terms. A truck will burn ten or fifteen gallons of gas or fuel oil to get ten tonnes of supplies a hundred miles. A helicopter burns a lot more fuel to cover the same distance with a much smaller load, and the fuel convoys across the Pakistani border have been shut down after the "accident". The only way to get that fuel into Afghanistan now is to fly it into airbases and that's both a logistical nightmare and also dollar-expensive.
Once we have fully robotic soldiers that can fuel themselves from local energy sources, and repair themselves and nano-fab their own bullets using local materials, these will be museum pieces.
That's about 3 hours of flight time. So people avoid the chopper for 3 hours and then come back after it runs our of fuel and goes away.
You need boots on the ground to hold something.
For cargo though I'd have thought something like this would be better:
http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
Deleted
I realise it's an emotive issue, but step back from the politics for a moment. Yes, really.
We live in a world with autonomous flying robots. Self-piloting helicopters that can fly to a location, do stuff, and fly home. Do you know what this means?
Flying cars. That's right, bitches. Flying cars, Real Soon Now.
It was worth the wait.
1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.
2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.
3) by beaming energy, we can also focus on electric weapons. Laser and rail guns make more sense than a round.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Considering the Army is heavily investing in solar because getting fuel in theater is insanely expensive, shipping via helicopter doesn't sound like it's going to scale very well. Can't afford to fix Medicare, but let's keep shipping billions to Afghanistan, where there's not even a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_train
to bring our boys and girls home?
remove fall back to GPS failover mechanism prior to deployment.
This is why America will never win the "War on Terror" (tm).
Americans are too chicken to fly supplies to their own troops or to shoot at their enemies, so they use robots to do it for them.
Terrorists on the other hand have no problem strapping explosives around themselves and blowing themselves up just to kill a few people.
Tell me who is more motivated? Tell me who is more likely to persist?
See what I did there? The summary headline suggests there's a robot helicopter out there that has supplies it is deciding to supply our troops with. The summary headline I wrote reflects reality, on the other hand, and suggests we have a robot helicopter and are using it to supply our troops.
The world is run by morons.